Do Something/Anything about ISIS? Would You Rather Have No Strategy or Bad Strategy?

by Bob Schwartz

President Obama candidly admitted that we have no strategy for dealing with ISIS, but that we are developing one.

Maybe too candid for the moment and his leadership position, but still a necessary truth. Necessary because no one on earth has a good strategy for dealing with that or the complex of situations around the world right now. For the religiously inclined, consider that Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed convening in the Situation Room would have a tough time figuring out what to do next, short of calling in the Big Gun and wiping the slate clean and starting again.

This hasn’t stopped Congress from urging a simple solution to this puzzle: do something/anything. This is an all-time irony, given that Congress is currently infamous for doing absolutely nothing, ever, no matter how important the problem and no matter how relatively simple the solution. If a number of the members had a sense of irony, we could all wryly laugh at this, except that their sense of irony is absent, along with a sense of duty, democracy, and Americanism (the real kind, not the fake). Some of these same members do seem to have a sense of justice, John Wayne frontier justice, which is unfortunately out of place in the liquid world of 2014 global politics and insurgency.

A few years ago, some thought that democracy would spread around the oppressed nations like an epidemic, like Arab Spring fever. But chaos is also an opportunistic contagion, and as those on one insurgent or imperialist front look at the other fronts multiplying, they see opportunity and seize it. It doesn’t help that the geography is claustrophobic. If you don’t know it, connect the dots from Iraq to Syria to Israel to Gaza to Egypt, Sudan, and Libya. And that’s just one pole of the current dynamic.

We have been tragically mistaken on strategy in the last three major American wars. One was an abject defeat, the other two—Iraq and Afghanistan—have sort of ended, with an indeterminate outcome, and withdrawal that may or may not last. Let’s pull back from partisan finger-pointing, and just admit that some situations—whether you choose to demur or however you choose to engage—may have outcomes, but may not have solutions.

You can be smart or stupid, fearless or timid, right or wrong, and you can still be overwhelmed by circumstances. That is, there is no “perfect” strategy, especially not with the way things are aligning. So no, you can’t wait for that perfect strategy. But you also shouldn’t rush in with the next idea that comes into your head, especially if that idea comes from some outdated playbook that has already proven itself ineffective in current realities.

“Just do it” sounds great, as long as you spend sufficient time really considering what “it” is and what the consequences and outcomes might be. Oh, and also, you might try being candid, as Obama has been, rather than making stuff up. Like about WMDs. Like about wars that will last weeks and cost nothing. Let’s leave that sort of unhelpful lying to fairy tale tellers like Vladimir Putin, who is not invading Ukraine, and to Putin’s admirers and portrait painters.

Thanks. Yeah, well, it’s like repeating the same sort of sensible stuff to your kids. to the point that they are sick of hearing it and you are just as sick of hearing yourself say it. You keep waiting for the light to go on, for sense to be meaningful, and sometimes, with time and experience, it does. If it sounds like I’m comparing some of our politicians to powerful and petulant children, listening only to themselves, always ready to make big and selfish mistakes, that’s okay.

Our congress and military are too stupid to fight their way out of a paper bag right now. We don’t have the right resources in the right places, and we surely don’t have the brains and honorable intentions. Our job is to lend support to the Muslim community already working to stop radicalism in its tracks.

All over the region, people are standing up to the crazy elements that have destroyed their lives directly or by provoking our national ire; the religious and secular are building their defiance and boldly displaying it in the face of terrorism. It’s just a matter of time. Peace is gonna win this round. Too many people are sick of this sh*t.

Our job as Americans is to simply admire and support them peacefully and unobtrusively with whatever non-military means we have available. One way is to just stay out of their way–keep our arrogance in our pockets. They know their countries and their people far better than we.

Our second job is to learn by their example, and start tackling our own Tea Party, religious evangelical, school-closing, media self-interested, and corporate terrorists here at home.

Your point about fighting extremism in its many forms, on many fronts, is excellent. We are quick to condemn global extremism — justifiably so — when it causes horrific harm. We are even willing to risk blood and treasure in fighting it. But domestically, we are not so clear about which extremists and fanatics to indict or to praise. There is, for just one example, a widespread view among Americans that Islam should “moderate” any of its dangerous extremist tendencies. That’s fine. But when the extremist tendencies are native here, “our” faith and politics, it’s harder to reach consensus on whether that is a bad or good or even godly thing. So maybe if we want to be the Moderation Police, we should, as you say, look in our own backyard.